Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Twitter birds are liars

How reliable is Twitter as a source of information, especially when other media channels are sleeping?

Twitter itself is saying that they are without a doubt the best way to share and discover what is happening right now. Well, I must agree about the way to share and “right now” but "discover" thing should be improved with words “discover what is happening right now in the mind of users fantasy”.

Let’s take an example. 19 of December. The elections of Belarus president where Alexander Lukashenko won. the things what happened after the elections in short:

Thousands of opposition protesters in Belarus have tried to storm the government headquarters, following the country's presidential election. A lot of people injured, because demonstration broke out in the capital city of Minsk in support of opposition presidential candidates. It happened because Alexander Lukashenko has been declared the winner, but the opposition claimed that the result was rigged. Interesting note: European Union promised to give 3 billion euros to Belarus, if the election will be held in democratic way. More about the protest read here.

While all the media kept silent, the social network Twitter made an awesome buzz. Hundreds of new tweets every minute wrote about the situation in Minsk. All the main information channels was waiting something. One of the most popular tweets was: „CNN, BBC, Euronews WHERE ARE YOU?! Yes, Korea is tense and yes, it's snowing, but the big story is October Sq, Minsk, Belarus.”

On that time it was the only source of information to understand, what is happening in October Square. From this point of view, the Twitter really showed it’s power, when the other media channels are slow or unwilling to broadcast the happening. One very popular tweet of that night was: „The entirevalueof Twitteris not intweets like "I'mValerie,I was in a toilet ", but manlyinsuchkind of moments.”

At the same time the main information what was retweeted the most was that there are tanks all around October square and 4 people are already killed in Minsk.” These messages created mistrust in my mind, because there was no prove- is it true or not. Hundreds of people retweeted this information and spread all over. Next day when finally news channels started to give an information about this happening, nobody talked about tanks and killed people. Why? Because it was lie. Anyone could write down whatever come in mind and spread it, because the attention for any information about this event was enormous. Those twitter users who didn’t understand the tweets in Russian but wanted to know what is happening, asked to translate these tweets in English. More and more misleading information came out. Another interesting thing. While this buzz in Twitter happened, immediately a fake profile of the Belarus president was made, where "he" gave "his" opinion, which again was immediately retweeted.

So, how really powerful is twitter in such kind of moments when people are the journalists and tell the news? The bright and really amazing thing is that you can get these news immediately and from the person involved in the happening, but from the other point of view, they have the opportunity to manipulate and spread untruth information. I don’t say that the news channels doesn’t do, but I think it’s more about hiding the information or telling the half true. In Twitter case the lies are more brutal.

109 comments:

The question mark is not just about twitter but in general internet....powerfull, democratic, free sometimes can produce disinformation. The point is that users should read and try to discern and compare rather than accept everything as absolute truth. It's always a matter of smartness...

Paolo, your conclusion is absolutely correct, but the thing why I pointed out exactly the Twitter, is that it works perfectly in one case- when something, worth to mention, something which is worth to tell the rest of the word is happening right now. And sometimes don't have other media (because they are not so fast or they have some purpose not to talk about it, like in the example i mentioned.) And in this case you don't have any possibility to compare the news and try to discern which information is correct, and which is not, so itš really easy to manipulate and lie.

For the sake of discussion let's draw a comparison here. Let's imagine the Belarus revolt would have started in 1940 (I know it's historically unbelievable, but let's pretend for a sec). No Twitter. No web.Just letters, newspaper articles, let's even imagine cardboard signs written with black paint by the protesters.Would those be more accurate?

Let's place now the same revolt in 1990. Tv news. Talk shows with political analysts both left and right wing claiming their side of the truth.Would those be more accurate?

My point is: it's not the media that is accurate per se. It is the research that has to be made to understand a phenomenon (protest, movement, trend, you name it). Historians did amazing researches by confronting the many different sources because they HAD THE TIME.

The fastest we grew accustomed to ingurgitate news, the less we are able to digest them. In the end that's my point: the problem with the Internet it's the immediacy, not the openness. That's what makes it so compelling yet so unreliable.

what you pointed out in my opinion is more general about the Internet world itself and how reliable it is as a source of information if we compare it to other media channels. Your comparison about 20th century is not so fair I think;) Because the time is passing and people are demanding more and more, including the speed of news. And Twitter is giving this speed, because it is giving a possibility to find out what is going on right now, because the next day newspapers and TV news will tell it of course, but Twitter give the possibility to follow the incident in his real time. Yes, of course, we should investigate the source to make sure if it's reliable, but sometimes,like in this case, you just don't have time to do that. You are reading these 100 new tweets every minute and trying to catch the main information and hope it's not a lie. And only the next day you will see, was it true or not.

Joe pointed out a good thing: "I don't know how far is the practicality of the solution that am proposing here but have always felt a need for a regulating body for social media that is not in the control of governments or private sectors that runs autonomously with the help donors and good wishers and the support of the common man, because such misleading tweets may not always be treated in a discrete way and maybe taken as the truth itself and thus trigger a social unrest. Just as wiki leaks leaks anything and everything why not have body parallely like the one i mentioned to validates its genuineness and thus set a balance...?"

That's an idea, but I think it's a long, long process..In Latvia we already have some laws and rules against comments in internet world which are against very rude and discriminating comments. some of the person are even sitting in a jail because of that, but it's only an exception. I don't know how strong such kind of rules are in other countries. And in this case it''s a little bit different, because it's not about rudeness and discrimination, but about brutal lying, which of course is another thing but not less important. As far as your social network identity is becoming stronger and more important, sooner or later there should be some system how to regulate it and than these people made news will make more sense and will be more trustful.

My comparison with 1990 was a paradox to point out one simple thing: what you're talking about here is asking a media a proposition that was not what the media was intended from the start.Either you go for accuracy and reliability or you go for promptness.Twitter proposition is immediacy.that's why I don't believe in regulating these type of media, for two reasons:first of all, as corporations like CNN or BBC should be held accountable for their tweets, tweets from a single person should be taken with a grain of salt. Second, regulating them means trying to turn them into something they were not created for.

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